120 Facts About Sir John Major

Sir John Major left school in 1959 with three O-levels, worked a variety of jobs and endured a period of unemployment, later establishing a career at Standard Bank.

Sir John Major was elected as a Conservative councillor on Lambeth London Borough Council, and later became an MP at the 1979 general election, when the Conservative Party returned to government with Margaret Thatcher as the new prime minister.

Sir John Major held several junior government positions in the early years of Thatcher's government, including Parliamentary Private Secretary and assistant whip.

Sir John Major was later promoted to become Foreign Secretary in July 1989, and again promoted three months later to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Sir John Major entered the second stage of the contest to replace her and emerged victorious, becoming prime minister on 28 November 1990.

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Sir John Major went on to lead the Conservative Party to a fourth consecutive electoral victory at the 1992 election, the only election he won during his seven-year-premiership.

John Major was born on 29 March 1943 at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in St Helier, Surrey, the son of Gwen Major and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball, who was 63 years old when Major was born.

Sir John Major was christened "John Roy Major" but only "John Major" was recorded on his birth certificate; he used his middle name until the early 1980s.

Sir John Major's birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and John Major requiring several blood transfusions due to an infection, causing permanent scarring to his ankles.

The Major family lived at 260 Longfellow Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, a middle-class area where Major's father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked in a local library and as a part-time dance teacher.

John Major later described the family's circumstances at this time as being "comfortable but not well off".

Sir John Major began attending primary school at Cheam Common School from 1948.

Sir John Major's childhood was generally happy, and he enjoyed reading, sports and keeping pets, such as his rabbits.

In 1954 John passed the 11+ exam, enabling him to go to Rutlish School, a grammar school in Merton Park, though to John's chagrin his father insisted that he register as 'John Major-Ball'.

Acutely conscious of his straitened circumstances vis-a-vis the other pupils, Sir John Major was something of a loner and consistently under-performed except in sports, coming to see the school as "a penance to be endured".

Sir John Major left school just before his 16th birthday in 1959 with just three O-level passes in History, English Language and English Literature, to his parents' disappointment.

In 1956 Sir John Major met local MP Marcus Lipton at a local church fair and was invited to watch his first debate in the House of Commons, where Harold Macmillan presented his only Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Sir John Major began working with his brother Terry at the garden ornaments business; this had been sold in 1959, enabling the family to move to a larger residence at 80 Burton Road, Brixton.

Sir John Major left the ornaments business the following year to care for his ill mother, though when she got better he was unable to find a new job and was unemployed for much of the latter half of 1962, a situation he says was "degrading".

In 1959 Sir John Major had joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton and soon became a highly active member, which helped increase his confidence following the failure of his school days.

Sir John Major stood as a Councillor in the 1964 Lambeth London Borough Council election for Larkhall ward at the age of 21 in 1964, losing to Labour.

Sir John Major assisted local Conservative candidates Kenneth Payne in the 1964 general election and Piers Dixon in the 1966 general election.

Sir John Major left the LEB and took up a post at District Bank in May 1965, though he soon left this to join Standard Bank the following year, largely because the latter offered the chance to work abroad.

Sir John Major stood again as Councillor in the 1968 Lambeth London Borough Council election, this time for Ferndale ward.

Sir John Major took a major interest in housing matters, with Lambeth notorious for overcrowding and poor-quality rented accommodation.

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In February 1970 Sir John Major became Chairman of the Housing Committee, being responsible for overseeing the building of several large council estates.

Sir John Major promoted more openness at the council, initiating a series of public meetings with local residents.

Sir John Major undertook fact-finding trips to the Netherlands, Finland and the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Sir John Major continued to work at Standard Bank, having completed his banking diploma in 1972.

Sir John Major was promoted to head of the PR department in August 1976, and his duties necessitated the occasional foreign trip to East Asia.

Sir John Major was selected as the Conservative candidate for the Labour-dominated St Pancras North constituency, fighting both the February and October 1974 general elections, losing heavily both times to Labour's Albert Stallard.

Sir John Major then attempted to get selected as a candidate for a more promising seat, and despite numerous attempts was unsuccessful until December 1976.

Sir John Major was in some ways an odd choice, being a born-and-bred Londoner in a largely rural constituency still home to many landed families; however, he was seen as being the most likely to win-over the increasingly large numbers of upwardly mobile London over-spill families living in the area, and he was helped to familiarise himself with the area by local MP David Renton.

In 1977 the Sir John Major family purchased a house at De Vere Close in the village of Hemingford Grey.

Sir John Major took on a less demanding job at Standard Chartered, and started working part-time in 1978 so that he could devote more time to his constituency duties.

Sir John Major won the Huntingdon seat by a large margin in the 1979 general election, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power.

Sir John Major made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 13 June 1979, voicing his support for the government's budget.

Sir John Major assiduously courted contacts at all levels of the party in this period, joining the informal 'Guy Fawkes club' of Conservative MPs and attending various Committees.

Sir John Major became Secretary of the Environment Committee and assisted with work on the Housing Act 1980, which allowed council house tenants the Right to Buy their homes.

Sir John Major later became an assistant whip in January 1983, responsible for East Anglian MPs.

Sir John Major addressed public meetings opposed to the protesters, organised by parish councillors, and met Bill Westwood and separately Michael Heseltine to discuss the issue.

Sir John Major comfortably won re-election to the now slightly enlarged seat of Huntingdon at the 1983 general election.

Shortly thereafter he and Norma moved to a larger house in Great Stukeley; Sir John Major generally spent his weekends there, and weekdays at a rented flat in Durand Gardens, Stockwell.

Sir John Major was invited to join the prestigious 'Blue Chip' group of rising stars in the Conservative Party, and he was promoted to Treasury Whip in October 1984.

Sir John Major narrowly avoided the IRA's Brighton hotel bombing in October 1984, having left the hotel only a few hours before the bomb went off.

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Also in this period, Sir John Major stood in for a Foreign Office minister on a trip to South America, visiting Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

The large size of the DHSS granted Ministers a greater degree of responsibility than in other departments, with Sir John Major assisting with work on the Social Security Act 1986 and improving provision for disabled people.

Sir John Major began to gain a bigger profile, giving his first speech at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1986.

Sir John Major first attracted major national media attention in January 1987 over cold weather payments to the elderly, when Britain was in the depths of a severe winter.

Amidst intense media criticism, Sir John Major discussed the issue with Margaret Thatcher and an increase in the payments was approved.

The then-Chancellor Nigel Lawson generally made significant decisions with little input from others, and Sir John Major was put in charge of agreeing departmental budgets with the Secretaries of State.

Sir John Major successfully concluded a second round of such spending reviews in July 1988.

Whilst Chief Secretary Sir John Major took part in discussions over the future funding of the NHS, against the background of an NHS strike in February 1988 over pay, resulting in the 'Working for Patients' white paper and subsequent National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.

Sir John Major insisted in discussions with Thatcher that government assistance should be provided to support the sale of Short Brothers to Bombardier, an aerospace company and major employer in Northern Ireland which might otherwise have collapsed.

Sir John Major found the prospect daunting, and unsuccessfully attempted to convince Thatcher to allow him to stay on at the Treasury.

Sir John Major accepted the job and began to settle into the department, living in an upstairs room at the FCO and devolving decision making where necessary, though he found the increased security burdensome and disliked the extensive ceremonial aspects of the role.

Sir John Major represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference to determine the future of Cambodia.

Sir John Major met with US secretary of state James Baker, with whom he primarily discussed the issue of Vietnamese boat people, and with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister of China, becoming the first senior Western politician to meet with a Chinese official since the violent crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square the previous month.

Sir John Major spent most of a summer holiday that year in Spain conducting extensive background reading on foreign affairs and British foreign policy.

In September 1989 Sir John Major delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he pledged to support Colombia's effort to tackle the drugs trade and reiterated Britain's opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The appointment meant that, despite only being in the Cabinet for a little over two years, Sir John Major had gone from the most junior position in the Cabinet to holding two of the Great Offices of State.

Sir John Major abolished the composite rate tax and stamp duty on share trades, whilst increasing taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and petrol.

Sir John Major agreed a restructuring and write-off of some Third World debt at a Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in September 1990.

Sir John Major was at home in Huntingdon recovering from a pre-arranged wisdom tooth operation during the first leadership ballot, which Thatcher won but not by the required threshold, necessitating a second round.

Sir John Major became prime minister on 28 November 1990 when he accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government, succeeding Margaret Thatcher.

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Sir John Major inherited a majority government from Margaret Thatcher who had been the prime minister for the previous eleven years.

On 12 May 1994, the Leader of the Opposition Sir John Major Smith died from a heart attack and was replaced by Tony Blair who continued Labour's modernisation under the slogan of "New Labour".

Sir John Major was succeeded by Tony Blair following the 1997 general election.

Speculation over Sir John Major's leadership had continued since his re-election in 1995, and intensified as it became increasingly likely that the Conservatives would suffer a landslide defeat in the upcoming general election.

Sir John Major served as Leader of the Opposition for seven weeks while the leadership election to replace him was underway.

Sir John Major formed a temporary Shadow Cabinet, but with seven of his Cabinet ministers having lost their seats at the election, and with few senior MPs left to replace them, several MPs had to hold multiple briefs.

Sir John Major himself served as shadow foreign secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, and the office of Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland was left vacant until after the 2001 general election as the party no longer had any Scottish MPs.

Sir John Major remained active in Parliament, regularly attending and contributing in debates.

Sir John Major stood down from the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, having announced his retirement from Parliament on 10 March 2000.

Sir John Major said that he wanted a "firebreak from politics" and to focus on writing and his business, sporting and charity work.

Since leaving office, Sir John Major has tended to maintain a low profile in the media, occasionally commentating on political developments in the role of an elder statesman.

Sir John Major has further indulged his love of cricket as President of Surrey County Cricket Club from 2000 to 2001.

Sir John Major left the committee in 2011, citing concerns with the planned redevelopment of Lord's Cricket Ground.

John Major has been actively engaged in charity work, being President of Asthma UK, and a Patron of the Prostate Cancer Charity, Sightsavers UK, Mercy Ships, Support for Africa 2000 and Afghan Heroes.

In February 2012, Sir John Major became chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, which was formed as part of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and is intended to support charitable organisations and projects across the Commonwealth, focusing on areas such as cures for diseases and the promotion of culture and education.

Sir John Major was a Patron of the sight loss and learning disability charity SeeAbility from 2006 to 2012 and has been a vice-president since 2013.

Sir John Major has pursued a variety of business interests, taking up appointments as Senior Adviser to Credit Suisse, chairman of the board of Senior Advisers at Global Infrastructure Partners, Global Adviser to AECOM, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and Chairman of the European Advisory Council of the Emerson Electric Company.

Sir John Major was a member of the Carlyle Group's European Advisory Board from 1998 and was appointed Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001.

Sir John Major was a director at the bus manufacturers the Mayflower Corporation from 2000 to 2003, which was liquidated in 2004 due to funding issues.

In 1993, Sir John Major sued two magazines, New Statesman and Society and Scallywag, as well as their distributors, for reporting rumours of an affair with Clare Latimer, a Downing Street caterer, even though at least one of the magazines had said that the rumours were false.

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In September 2002, it was revealed that, prior to his elevation to the Cabinet, Sir John Major had had a four-year-long extramarital affair with Edwina Currie, from 1984 to 1988.

Sir John Major has become an active after-dinner speaker, earning over £25,000 per engagement for his "insights and his own opinions" on politics and other matters according to his agency.

Sir John Major is actively involved in various think tanks: he is the Chair of the Panel of Senior Advisers at Chatham House, a member of the International Advisory Boards of the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, the InterAction Council, the Baker Institute in Houston, and a Patron of the Atlantic Partnership.

Sir John Major was a Director with the Ditchley Foundation from 2000 to 2009, and a President of the influential centre-right think tank the Bow Group from 2012 to 2014.

Sir John Major denied doing so, saying that he had not heard of the request until the scheduled release date and had merely asked to look at the papers himself.

Sir John Major told BBC News that he and Lamont had been the victims of "whispering voices" to the press.

In December 2006, Sir John Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq, following revelations made by Carne Ross, a former British senior diplomat, that contradicted Blair's case for the invasion.

Sir John Major was touted as a possible Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London elections in 2008, but turned down an offer from Conservative leader David Cameron.

Sir John Major was a vocal supporter for the Remain camp in the 2016 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.

Sir John Major feared Brexit would make the UK poorer and could endanger the peace settlement in Northern Ireland.

On 30 August 2019, it was announced that Major intended to join a court case by Gina Miller against the proroguing of Parliament by the prime minister, Boris Johnson.

In February 2022, Major made a speech at the Institute for Government think-tank in London, in which he criticised Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal, suggesting that he ought to resign, and the proposed policy for those seeking asylum which he called "un-British".

Sir John Major never succeeded in reconciling the "Euro-rebels" among his MPs to his European policy, who although relatively few in number, wielded great influence because of his small majority and their wider following among Conservative activists and voters.

Sir John Major's task became even more difficult after the election of the modernist and highly media-savvy Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994, who mercilessly exploited Conservative divisions whilst shifting Labour to the centre, thus making it much more electable.

Whilst few observers doubted that Sir John Major was an honest and decent man, or that he made sincere and sometimes successful attempts to improve life in Britain and to unite his deeply divided party, he was perceived as a weak and ineffectual figure, and his approval ratings for most of his time in office were low, particularly after "Black Wednesday" in September 1992 which destroyed the Conservative's reputation for effective economic management.

In 2012 Oborne had written that Sir John Major's government looks ever more successful as time goes by.

Mark Stuart, writing in 2017, stated that Sir John Major is "the best ex-Prime Minister we have ever had", praising him for initiating the Northern Ireland peace process, peacefully handing Hong Kong back to China, creating the National Lottery and leaving a sound economy to Labour in 1997.

Dennis Kavanagh likewise states that Sir John Major did relatively well considering the unbridgeable divides that existed in the Conservative Party in the 1990s, chiefly over Europe, whilst delivering economic growth, a more user-focused public sector and the basis of peace settlement in Northern Ireland.

Sir John Major's will be judged an important if unruly premiership at the end of the Conservative century, completing some parts of an earlier agenda while in some key respects helping to define a Conservatism for the 21st century.

Sir John Major's appearance was noted for its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large glasses, all of which were exaggerated in caricatures.

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For example, in Spitting Image, Sir John Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer to that of a literally grey man who ate dinner with his wife in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear", while at the same time nursing an unrequited crush on his colleague Virginia Bottomley – an invention, but an ironic one in view of his affair with Edwina Currie, which was not then a matter of public knowledge.

The magazine still runs one-off specials of this diary on occasions when Sir John Major is in the news, such as on the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the publication of his autobiography.

Sir John Major was often mocked for his nostalgic evocation of what sounded like the lost Britain of the 1950s.

Sir John Major has been depicted on screen by Keith Drinkel in Thatcher: The Final Days, Michael Maloney in Margaret, Robin Kermode in The Iron Lady, Marc Ozall in the TV series The Crown, Gordon Griffin in Westminster on Trial and Roger Sansom in On the Record.

Sir John Major was one of the prime ministers portrayed in the 2013 stage play The Audience.

Sir John Major was portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller in the fifth season of The Crown in 2022.

Sir John Major called the series a "barrel-load of nonsense" for a fictitious storyline in which the then Prince Charles lobbies Sir John Major in 1991, attempting to oust Queen Elizabeth II from power.

Sir John Major was a teacher and a member of the Young Conservatives.

Sir John Major has been keen on sports since his youth, most notably cricket; he is a supporter of Chelsea FC and a Patron of British Gymnastics.

Sir John Major enjoys gardening, listening to music and reading; Anthony Trollope being among his favourite authors.

Sir John Major is a Christian, though his upbringing was never especially religious and he states that he is "a believer at a distance".

Sir John Major was granted the Outstanding Contribution to Ireland award in Dublin on 4 December 2014.

On 8 May 2012, Sir John Major was personally decorated at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo by the Emperor of Japan with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his invaluable contributions to Japan–UK relations through his work in the political and economic arena, and in promoting mutual understanding.

In 2008, Sir John Major won the British Sports Book Awards for More Than a Game.

An oil painting of Sir John Major, painted in 1996 by June Mendoza, is part of the Parliamentary collection, as is a bronze bust by Anne Curry, unveiled in the Members' Lobby on 16 October 2017.